If we’re talking cold, hard cash, some of the Browns’ players are set for life.

Many will leave the game semi-rich.

The rookies who will last but a year will have to take $405,000 before-taxes as far as they can.

We approached players from each group in the wake of the Trent Richardson tornado that blew through the locker room.

We supposed answers would flow more freely if we promised anonymity. We were simply looking for an accurate picture of how Joe Banner and Michael Lombardi and the health of the franchise are perceived.

Some of our conversations occurred before Mike Holmgren’s sonic blast, some after. Holmgren could afford to say anything he liked.

Browns fans tend to resent the fact Holmgren was paid a ransom and the team is a wreck. It was 14-34 with rosters assembled on his presidential watch. It is hard to find anyone who doubts it will be 0-3 after the game at Minnesota.

Holmgren, perhaps, resents Banner and Lombardi for blowing up a chance to do what he thought was going to happen: A breakthrough if what they inherited was managed a certain way.

The Richardson trade blew his mind.

“It’s too wild,” he said on an interview that started on Seattle radio and soon was heard around the world. “Things like this never happen. But it happened.”

If he had been head coach, he said, he wouldn’t have stood for it. Rob Chudzinski, in a far different place in his career, strenuously stood behind it.

Holmgren was the right man in the wrong job.

Randy Lerner became convinced he needed the fellow at any cost, in whatever role. The chase began at about the time Eric Mangini’s 2009 team was 1-11, coming off a 4-12 year, having just fired general manager George Kokinis.

Lerner got his man even before the season ended. The cost was way too wild.

Holmgren absorbed every power most owners have. Lerner felt like a fifth wheel.

Holmgren hired all of the bigwigs on the football and business sides. After a year, he hired a head coach no one else was even interviewing. He tapped one of his best friend’s general managers to be his roster architect.

Maybe it would have worked with the right head coach.

There was the predicament. Holmgren’s only shot at being worth his millions was to reprise the role he filled in Green Bay and Seattle. “Browns head coach Mike Holmgren,” in retrospect, was the only way to fly.

The man wanted the headset; the wife wanted her husband back. We believe it was essentially as simple as that.

Had Holmgren found a way to spend the miserable hours an NFL coach must invest, the team might have turned. In the role he performed, it wouldn’t have mattered if he arrived at 5 a.m. and left at midnight.

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A sad irony is left. Many fans are left thinking he did a grand-theft job on Lerner. Holmgren is left regretting how poorly things turned out, especially now that a chance for redemption — his regime would have to be credited if the 2013 Browns become the NFL’s annual surprise team — seems gone.

Had Holmgren agreed to be head coach, we’re guessing, Lerner would have stayed, because there would have been a winner to stay for. The names Haslam, Banner and Lombardi would not have approached Cleveland’s radar screen.

Instead, Banner is the face of the franchise, reporting to a lawyered-up owner while speaking for a secretive general manager.

Some fans have divorced the team unconditionally. Many hold out hope the Haslam-Banner-Lombardi trifecta has affected only a temporary, if severe, depression.

We asked around among the key employees, the players, about the big bosses.

Some of them will wind up as free agents at liberty to conclude they want out as soon as they can get out.

All of them have made a decision about where the Richardson trade leaves them for the Minnesota game. Who are they playing for at this point? Self? Certain teammates? The coaches? The fans? God? Family? The men who pick the players?

In a team sport full of intangibles, what big boss wouldn’t strive to nurture every possible motivation?

We asked around, trying to discern the accurate level of trust in Banner and Lombardi.

One of the rookies, not a top pick, said he appreciated that Lombardi was the team representative who called him on draft day.

Another said the day he became a Brown was so tumultuous he doesn’t even remember who from the team called him.

Neither player has talked to Lombardi since, other than to say hello. Neither thinks that is unusual.

Several players said they sometimes see Banner or Lombardi in a hallway, where hellos are exchanged, and that’s the extent the relationship.

One starter on offense said he notices Banner and Lombardi at practice on a regular basis. It gives him the idea that they are plugged in to everything that goes on.

Another said Banner seems to be out and about in the halls a lot, more so than Lombardi.

Still another seemed dumbstruck by the trade — we encountered him the day after the deal. There was pain in his eyes.

Banner almost glories in how people guess at who makes final decisions. The players have no better idea than we do.

One rookie didn’t seem fazed by the latest deal at all. He’s trying to win a job. Good luck to Richardson, but he can’t be preoccupied with a secure player who will be spending his millions elsewhere.

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One acknowledged team leader was defiant, agreeing that it matters none of what he thinks of the trade, that it was done, that it doesn’t change his personal desire to win now. Damn the torpedoes. On he will lead.

Another was much harder to read.

One fairly new player was agitated by the topic. He left our conversation quickly and politely.

By the time the team flew out, we had come to believe that player opinions and sentiments and motivations are all over the place, but not — as far as those things go — in a state of chaos.